Oreck XL Tower Professional Air Purifier

February 2009. The consensus among owners and experts is that the Oreck XL Tower Professional Air Purifier is every bit as overpriced and underperforming as The Sharper Image Ionic Breeze Quadra. In Air Purifier's America's tests, the Tower picked up fewer particles than most of the competition. Air-Purifier-Power.com gives Oreck air cleaners low scores for performance and ozone emissions, while an owner posting on Epinions complains about noisy operation and the need for frequent cleaning. Clearly for the money, a top-rated air purifier such as the IQAir HealthPro (*est. $750) would be a better choice.

We found two sources that actually test the Oreck XL Tower Professional Air Purifier against the competition -- Air-Purifiers-America.com, which rates this machine's performance in a 132-square-foot room, and Consumer Reports, which evaluates it in a test lab in comparison with 35 other air purifiers. One owner on Epinions posts a detailed review of the Oreck XL Tower (which he says he bought after watching a late-night infomercial), and Oreck purifiers in general are discussed at Air-Purifier-Power.com. Finally, as an example of the sort of shifty marketing ploys we find with several air purifiers, we included a "review" of the Oreck XL Tower that was clearly written by someone with an interest in selling this machine -- and which pops up prominently in web searches.